Cougar Crashes a Point Roberts Dance
A celebratory night out for local youth turned into a brush with a mountain lion, resulting in a frantic rescue mission.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last Thursday night, as a party of young folks was going home from a dance, they were suddenly startled by a terrible scream, and the next instant a cougar leaped from a tree and landed in their midst, causing great excitement. They ran through the brush and over logs to Mr. Moutrey's house, where it was found that Tommy White was missing. A search was at once instituted and he was found in an unconscious condition with the cougar standing over him. The animal was finally beaten off with clubs by C. Thompson and Joe Brewster. White in the meantime had regained his senses and proved to be uninjured, though badly frightened. They then went back to the house, followed by the cougar. It stayed around the house until daylight, uttering the most blood-curdling yells and springing against the house, where the huge muddy footprints could be seen the next day. No damage was done beyond a bad fright and clothes torn from crawling under logs, but Thompson got a severe scratch on the face during his brave fight.
“It stayed around the house until daylight, uttering the most blood-curdling yells and springing against the house.”
Wildlife encounters remain a part of the Pacific Northwest experience, though modern urban expansion has significantly shifted the range of cougars away from central downtown areas. This account from Point Roberts captures the wild, unpredictable nature of 1890s Washington life, where a simple social outing could turn into a life-or-death confrontation.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.